AMBULANCES Flying Simply Explained

The last album review here was for a record called “Levitates” which had a subterranean sound. Now here is an album called “Flying Simply Explained” which was recorded at The Sub Station in Rosyth. I’m not sure if The Sub Station is actually subterranean but despite occasional moments of darkness, the second album from Ambulances is a much more of an airy, overground record than the one from Devoted Friend.

The Fife four-piece have re-grouped in the wake of band members departing and even dying and produced a crisp, shiny collection of largely sunlit alt-pop songs. Never purely synth-pop despite the synthesizers and drum effects; never fully indie-pop despite the bitter-sweet male/female vocals; and never backward-looking despite its 90s sheen and musical reference points. The double-sided single in April (both sides included here) was a neatly upbeat package that drew comparisons from me to King Biscuit Time for ‘Feeling Sick’ (of which Steve Mason has now created a dub version) plus Ladytron and The Dandy Warhols for ‘Shine On My Shoes’. The remaining songs on this eleven track release are a cohesive grouping but mix wider sounds and styles with a tendency to more occasional downbeat moments.


Opener ‘Too High’ is a love-song about being broken in pieces that mixes a rich guitar twang and the seductive cooing vocals of Sara Colston with a feeling of dewy-eyed sadness. ‘Bimble Grimm’ is a curious fairy-tale slice of slow-tempo psyche-pop. Later the jubilant swing and gleeful horns of ‘Animal Song’ is the record’s most upbeat moment despite more stern vocals from Scott Lyon. Elsewhere I hear hints of Cinerama and Kirsty Maccoll in ‘Wee Beast’, more Ladytron in the crunchy electroclash-leaning ‘Weak Spot’, and even the romantic bar-room croon of an Edwyn Collins or Richard Hawley in ‘Falling Apart’. For all the hints of sorrow sitting beneath the sunny dream-pop, whether lyrically or in the contrasting voices of Lyon and Colston, ‘Telescopes’ does provide a moment of unequivocal optimism: ‘I’m in love with the future’.

‘Flying Simpled Explained’ is a mature, carefully constructed set of songs that doesn’t kow-tow to the zeitgeist or hip references but is confident in its own happy-sad, self-released sheen. The sound of a band coming up for air?





Ambulances Flying Simply Explained [BUY]

AMBULANCES Feelin' Sick / Shine On My Shoes

Living and recording in the shadow of mutually assured destruction (Rosyth the now de-commissioned nuclear submarine base) and with the sad death of a band member last year, you could forgive Ambulances for being overly obsessed with life cruelly foreshortened. And this is before you get to their name, the fact there last album was called “The Future That Was” and that the cover of this double A-sided single features a propeller airplane coming out of a tail-spin.

‘Feelin’ Sick’, despite its title and this backdrop, actually feels quite alive, optimistic and on a steady course in its opening moments. Initial reassurance is replaced by a sinking feeling – oh no, dreaded white-boy indie-dub-skank. Fear not, the Fife group neatly avoid a early press of the ‘stop’ button by delivering a hypnotic, loping rhythm that is sturdy and solid, and paired with a dark, late 80s sobriety and some steely-soft, almost spoken vocals from Scott Lyon. The clever combination of taut and loose, catchy and sombre, works well and it builds with some squelchy synth pulses into a densely layered and intense finale. It reminds me of ex-Beta Band man Steve Mason in his King Biscuit Time guise.



The other song ‘Shine On My Shoes’ is a summery chug which balances out vocal duties with Sara Colston joining Lyon in some gorgeous boy-girl harmony interplay. Together with the other band members – guitarist Graham Jack, bassist Stephen Oswald – they plant a flag somewhere between Ladytron and The Dandy Warhols.

This is my first proper encounter with the Scottish band having not heard their 2009 Kramer-produced debut album. But these six and a half minutes are a promising curtain-raiser for full length album “Flying Simply Explained” that follows this summer.



Ambulances Feelin’ Sick / Shine On My Shoes [BUY]